


I spilled out my heart in the front of your car

by muppetstiefel



Series: personal best. [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet Ending, Boys In Love, Car Sex, First Kiss, First Love, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, Late Night Conversations, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:15:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: "Stan has a way of going cold whenever Bill steps over their unspoken boundaries, and there’s a chill when they part ways, a paralysing fear as Bill drives them back through the streets of Derry. They’re quietest at the break of midnight, and Stan is quiet too, back pressed to the seat, head lolling slightly so he can watch the blur of headlights through the window. So, no. Bill doesn’t mention love letters, or fate, or how beautiful Stan looks in the glow of stars and lamplight."
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Stanley Uris, Bill Denbrough & Stanley Uris & Richie Tozier, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris
Series: personal best. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032387
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	I spilled out my heart in the front of your car

Stan gets his car when he’s fifteen.

He doesn’t even have a permit yet, but his dad buys him it anyway. It’s a faded blue, scratched down the side but surprisingly clean, even with the dinted wing mirror. It’s a sweet sixteenth present that Stan knows about for months in advance, because it’s sat on his drive.

His parents were never any good at surprises.

Sans permit Stan can’t drive it. Bill nicknames it lucky blue, though, and even in the middle of winter they sit in the front seat with the heating on. It’s more private than their bedrooms, with the fogged up windows and battered seats that, with enough force, you can push into full recline.

Richie likes it because he can smoke. Stan does not like it for that reason. He kicks Richie out once, for blowing smoke rings into his face. It’s hard to kick someone out of a car, Bill soon discovers, watching Stan clamber out of the passenger seat to haul Richie out by his arm.

They don’t drink in their marooned vehicle; they all know better than to drink on the Uris drive, and Stan isn’t a fan of it anyway. Richie grumbles and moans about that enough, but not inside the car. Lucky Blue is their safe place, their haven. They stock it full of blankets and emergency water and torches and spend nights in their together, dozing on the seats, studying on the dashboard.

Lucky is the first thing that’s theirs.

Bill turns sixteen first. He gets his permit, passes his test, but there’s no dented car waiting on the Denbrough drive. Georgie buys him a little toy car and presses it into his hand apologetically, but Bill doesn’t mind. He’s got Lucky, and he’s got Stan and Richie. He’s fine.

They take her to the diner for her first outing, parking her in the desolate parking space. Richie encourages her the entire way, fist pumping as Bill turns corners in a way that should be infuriating, if Stan weren’t laughing so hard.

She makes it to the diner. She makes it to a lot more destinations. The cinema, the quarry, arcades and parks and abandoned warehouses. School, and back again, every day without fail. Bill loves the school rides the most; the three of them and Lucky, an indivisible unit, steadily pacing forwards. He loves them the most, even if he has to walk to and from Stan’s house every day just to get them.

She takes them out of Derry and into the wilderness, but never further than the borders of Maine. She’s an old girl, a delicate girl, and they don’t dare push her. Sometimes, on the trips off the usual path and into nature, Bill notices Stan whispering encouragements to the dashboard. He doesn’t mention it.

Richie gets his permit, and takes them on a celebratory spin around the block. He nearly totals the car, and is subsequently banned from driving Lucky for the foreseeable future.

However, Bill’s favourite trips are just him and Stan. They drive to the quarry mostly, and just sit, the two of them in compatible silence, gaze fixed ahead, minds anywhere but Derry. Sometimes they talk, let out their frustrations where no one can stop them; Stan talks of his dad, of temple, of school and of the impending future in which Bill and Richie inevitably leave him, a year ahead in school. Bill talks of his parents, of Georgie, of visiting aunts and uncles, of not knowing what he wants to do with his life besides writing, which isn’t possible.

“Who says it isn’t?” Stan will ask, which shuts Bill up. He can never disagree with Stan, no matter how much he wants to.

Sometimes, Stan will study and Bill will write, scribbling down sentences that fall into view, and reading them to Stan. If he smiles, Bill will slip them into his pocket and save them for later. It’s their version of love letters, not that he’d ever admit that to him. Stan has a way of going cold whenever Bill steps over their unspoken boundaries, and there’s a chill when they part ways, a paralysing fear as Bill drives them back through the streets of Derry. They’re quietest at the break of midnight, and Stan is quiet too, back pressed to the seat, head lolling slightly so he can watch the blur of headlights through the window. So, no. Bill doesn’t mention love letters, or fate, or how beautiful Stan looks in the glow of stars and lamplight.

“I don’t get it.”

Bill doesn’t like to be angry in the car, their holy sanctuary, but there’s a frustration as he sits there, legs crossed and pulled into the seat. His stomach has been tied into knots of stress all week, and with finals fast approaching he’s sure if he doesn’t get the frustration out soon he’s going to end up punching a wall, or screaming so hard he tears a hole in his throat. Fucking calculus.

Stan is a year younger, a sophomore still, but he’s sharp and good at math and is already in AP calculus. He’s good at soothing out the lines in Bill’s mind until they’re digestible; it’s always been the way the two of them work. When he had offered to tutor him, Bill had thought it would be the same, but the stress is still palpable, and the air in the car stifling.

Stan is watching him inscrutably, over the tip of his nose, like he’s surveying him. Bill wishes he knew what Stan were thinking, but just when he’s sure it might crack it, Stan looks down to the open text book in his lap. Bill tries to focus on the factorial in front of him but it dances, and mixes, until it’s a muddle of nothing. He whines in frustration, and Stan looks back up, thoughtfully startled.

“What is this shit? Why the fuck do I need to know this?” he cries out, and Stan leans in to look at the sum.

“You’re nearly there,” he says carefully, tracing the tip of his pencil across the string of working out. “You just need to multiply it, now.”

And sure, that makes sense, but Bill is still so angry and strung out, and he can’t get himself to calm down. He doesn’t move to finish the sum, and Stan doesn’t move to lean back, still frowning at the book. It’s the type of frown where his brows are furrowed, but his mouth is thin and inflexed; a thoughtful frown, not an angry one.

“How is this eh-ever gonna huh-help me get a mortgage?” Bill mutters under his breath, and he sees a smirk from where Stan is bent, concealed beneath his hair and the half-cast of darkness in the car.

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Stan replies, sitting up sharply, still sat dangerously close to Bill. There’s a glint in his eyes, a sharpness and edge that Bill knows all too well is dangerous and self-destructive. He’s known that look for years, can feel that look in his pores, and it makes him grin wide. “They’re calculating mortgages in factorials now.”

Bill laughs, a snort and exhale in the relative quietness of the car. The radio is turned off – a condition of studying with Stan – and Bill realises he’s barely missed its crackly sound in the comfortable silence.

“This is all such bullshit,” he says, but he feels less angry now, with Stan’s wide eyes fixed on him. “Cah-can’t we learn shit tha-tha-that actually matters?”

Stan doesn’t answer. There’s a slow exhale, and a flicker in his eyes, and then he’s turning away from Bill, who already feels the absence of his gaze.

He’s used to Stan’s contemplative silences. He’s certainly not good at interpreting them, because there’s a severity in each one, but he’s good at filling them. The frustrations still there, in the pit of his stomach, and when he tries to pick up his pencil and finish the sum, he finds his hand skirting across the page, until it’s a mess of lead. He grabs the page and rips it from the spine, balling it up in the palm of his hand and crushes it until he feels paper cuts scarring his hand.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and then there are hands on his, unballing his fist and extracting the paper. Stan’s fingers are cold, and thin, but they pull the paper out and smooth it out until it’s lying flat against the dashboard. He turns back to Bill with those wide eyes, and suddenly his mouth is a faucet that won’t stop leaking.

“I’m juh-just so fuh-fucking sih-sih- _fuck_!” Stan doesn’t interrupt him, doesn’t finish his words like Richie does when trying to be helpful, just surveys him carefully, over the tip of his nose, lips slightly parted. “Why does anyone hah-have a sah-sah-say over _my_ life? It’s all go to college, get married, have kids, buy a fucking house in the fucking suburbs and just waste away until you die.”

“I thought you wanted to go to college,” Stan says coolly, and it’s true. He knows Bill back to front and inside out.

“I do,” Bill insists with a sigh. He tips his head back until it hits the headrest, grappling around for the right words. “I do, but I – I want to go on my own tuh-terms, not theirs.”

It slips out bitterly, and while Bill doesn’t mean to say it, he’s glad it’s out. His stomach is still knotted tight but he swears he feels it loosen at the masked confession.

Stan sees it straight away, tipping his head further towards Bill’s until their eyes meet. “Is this about your dad?”

“He wants me to study accounting,” Bill’s voice is dangerously close to whining, but he can’t help it. He can’t keep anything from Stan for long, and he’s bubbling since the fight he had with his dad that morning. He isn’t even sure what they were fighting about. Everything, maybe. “I can’t even do basic math, how the fuck am I supposed to do accounting?”

“You can do basic math,” Stan replies, smiling softly like he understands but doesn’t want to. Of course he understands, Bill thinks. If anyone’s parents have had their life planned out from birth, it’s the Uris family. At least if Bill fucks up his parents have a chance of redemption in Georgie, who’s already their poster child.

“Not like yuh-you,” Bill replies. “I don’t even fuh-fuh-fucking like it. I want to – I don’t kn-know – I want to ac-actually live.”

Stan’s still smiling, but it’s thinner, stretched unevenly across his mouth. “Accountants aren’t all miserable zombies,” he says, and his tone is light but it’s laced with something Bill doesn’t think he’ll ever understand, not in the way Stan understands him.

“It’s not me, though. I don’t want someone telling me how to live, or what to love or who-”

 _Who to love._ It goes unsaid, because Bill stops himself, words dying on his tongue. Stan doesn’t shift, but he must notice the way Bill freezes mid-sentence.

Oh.

_Oh._

_That’s what this is about._

He tries it a few times around in his mind – ‘I’m in love with Stan’. It clicks everything in his brain into place, like a key turning in a rusty lock and the door giving way after years of being tightly shut. There’s a dizzying feeling that comes with it, an inevitability of _of course_ , because he’s staring in Stan’s eyes and he’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. Bill’s known, he’s always known, because the world is simple with Stan, even if loving this boy is the most complicated part of life.

“What if I want that?”

Stan says it so suddenly, sitting up and turning to face straight out of the window. The spell is broken, the moment gone, but the _loving_ is still there, beating in his heart, the baseline of everything.

“What?” Bill doesn’t even know what Stan is asking, because he doesn’t remember what he said.

“Would you think less of me if I wanted that? The house, the job, the wife and the two point five children,” Stan says, and his voice cuts straight through Bill, the sentiment stinging even more.

“Do you want that?”

Stan doesn’t reply, and for a minute the only sound in the car is his deep inhale, and the rustle of fabric as he smooths down the arms of his shirt which haven’t been creased at all. “I don’t know,” he says after a while, and then; “I think it would be nice for someone to tell me what to do. Life would be so easy.”

“Then you could never make your own decisions.”

“I don’t know if letting me make decisions is such a good idea,” Stan cracks a smile, but it looks almost sinister in the cars darkened light. The joke isn’t funny, anyways, and the idea of Stan’s suburban life fills Bill with too much dread to return the smile.

“What would you do, right now, if you could do anything?” Bill asks, finding himself genuinely caring about the answer. Stan is far from impulsive, unlike Richie, or Bill himself, but there’s no impulsivity in hypotheticals. “I mean, anything. If for once you just forgot about doing what you were told to and just acted on impulse-”

He doesn’t have a chance to finish the question, because Stan’s lips are on his, alive, and suffocating. He blinks into the kiss, into the feeling of Stan’s hands closed around the side of his face, his knees pressing into Bill’s, both of them twistedly awkwardly in their seats in order to reach one another. Bill realises a few seconds into Stan’s lips moving against his that his eyes are still open like a dumbass, and he’s clutching tightly onto the side of his seat. He reaches up instead, resting his hands on the base of Stan’s neck, rubbing circles into the skin with his thumbs. Stan keens into the touch, then pulls away, face flushed and lips still parted.

Bill’s kissed girls, before. He’s not sure if kindergarten girlfriends count, but he had countless, and then there are school parties and spin the bottle and the time Wendy McCormac cornered him when he was waiting outside the grocery store for his mom. None of it ever compared to that one kiss with Stan, stood on his doorstep. Nothing ever compared to the softness of Stan’s hands, and the taste of his chap stick, and the coldness of their knees knocking together.

Now, Bill’s starting to think he didn’t kiss Stan right. He’ll have to do it again, and again, and again.

So, he leans in again, this time hands closing around the soft fabric of the other boy’s shirt. Stan’s hands are on his shoulders, like he’s holding Bill in place, firmly. There’s a swipe of a tongue against Bill’s bottom lip, and god, when did Stan learn to kiss like this? It’s dirty, but pure, and Bill lowers his hands to grip at his waist, feeling himself dizzying off the two of them, together, kinetic and alive.

There’s a vulnerability to Stan in the moment, and Bill savours it, hands pressed flush against his chest. He’s inscrutable most of the time, but in the car, alone, he allows Bill to crack him open and sew him back together, carefully, gently.

He isn’t sure who pulls back first, but it must be one of them because Stan is running a hand down where Bill has gripped at his shirt, trying to smooth it out. Bill can feel the heat in his own cheeks, and is raking a hand through his hair when it slips out, unbidden from his mouth. “I ruh-really like you Stan,” he says, cheeks hot, shirt crinkled, hair out of place. Stan looks perfect, fingers skirting over the buttons of his shirt, nothing out of place, everything perfect as it should be.

“I like you too,” the return is dry, the retort quick. “A little more than Richie but don’t tell him.” He’s smiling, gentle, but absent, like his mind has already wandered from the together and back into the separate.

There’s an urgency in Bill’s voice when he leans back against his seat, a panic bubbling like the words have to leave his mouth before they die in his throat. “No, Stan, I ruh-really luh-like you. More than I like Ruh-Richie. More th-than I should, may-maybe, I-” He swipes a hand through his hair, searching for the words, ignoring the alert way Stan is searching for him. “I think this is what luh-love feels like? Stan? Do-do you think…”

Stan doesn’t say anything, even though he’s still smiling, a strained, tight-lipped smile.

“Is this romantic? I’m trying to be romantic, right now. You can tell me to shut up, if you want,”

He freezes when Bill says it, eyes casting to the other boy, leant against the side door, hair matted to his forehead with sweat. “Don’t say that,” he says, voice soft but considered, all gentleness gone, now cutting coldly right through to the centre of Bill’s heart.

He forces himself forward, arms seeking the other boy, who shies away from his touch. The boy who was just curled around him. The boy who sits next to him, in silent companionship and smiles at his musings. “Stan…”

“No, Bill. Don’t say that,” he persists, fingers fumbling for the seat in front, steadying himself. His expression is unreadable, even to Bill, who has spent years studying each quirk of his lips.

“But I mean it,” he insists, driving forward even more. He stops when Stan flinches.

“It doesn’t matter, Bill. Please don’t say it.” He closes his eyes, presses his fingers to his forehead, like trying to ease a phantom pain. “I don’t want you to say it.”

Bill sits back, a defeated feeling spreading through his body, accompanied by a burning shame. He wants to tell Stan he loves him, wants to tell him every inch of his body is on fire in a way he’ll never grasp, but he can’t because Stan is pleading, he’s pleading in his own way, stubborn and angry.

“You’re my best friend, Billy,” Stan whispers, the smallest of smiles breaking across his face and he never calls him Billy, never, but something in the word makes Bill’s heart break a little more. Then he's pushing their bodies back together, fitting perfectly back into place, smoothing over all the words and solidifying the presence of them, if not vocally then physically, on the back seat of Stan’s beat up car.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a segment from a (MUCH) longer fic which, honestly, sucked. If I get more inspiration I may try to re-draft it.
> 
> Title inspired by Enough For You by Maisie Peters (fic itself inspired by her song Personal Best)


End file.
